Reader letters Feb. 14

A pox on the six-headed reptilian monster that controls the fate of 60 percent of working America. We are endangered by

1) socialistic president and his staff with only 18 percent touting job-creating experience outside government.

2) Federal Reserve mirrors the 200 percent stock market rise in 1930s, but this time by printing 4 trillion funny-money dollars and keeping interest rates near zero. Company stock buybacks (0.6 trillion in 2013) boost stocks, but don’t hire more employees. Stock market gains help only the wealthy. It hasn’t worked in 1935 or 2013.

3) Treasury didn’t have guts enough to separate Big Bank commercial business loan divisions from their 500 trillion dollar “high risk 35:1 derivative portfolio divisions.” They added the banks’ collapsed debt to the taxpayers of the next 40 years.

5) Big Banks still today hoard trillions of our “bailout debt dollars” as collateral covering their investments in 250 trillion of derivative paper — 20:1 ratios of loan to reserves — not new factories to help employ our working class.

Do you think six Senate seats in 2014/2016 elections can turn this catastrophe around? Washington is structurally dysfunctional! Thomas Jefferson said democracy would eventually run amok, but be save by a Constitutional Convention’s restructuring of government agencies and Congress. Hopelessly, we voters are split 50/50 down a socialist-individualist chasm!

Business enterprise zones for inner cities were proposed 340 years ago — nonexistent today.We folks don’t live within our individual means; we complain until government creates more safety nets. Congress balanced only five budgets in 50 years! Public ethics codes have disappeared. Our Ship-of-State is rudderless.

Jack Ryan

Waynesville

Comments (2)

Posted by: Scott Lilly | Feb 14, 2014 14:19

"Hopelessly, we voters are split 50/50 down a socialist-individualist chasm!" -- Bingo! The natural evolution of a democracy is to have 51% of the people (majority) taking from the other 49% (minority). (Social security, government assistance, higher tax rates for the wealthy, subsidized healthcare, etc.) Once that condition is reached, the "makers" become less motivated to be productive thereby providing "takers" less to take. (Or worse yet, more "makers" join the "takers" team and give a double-whammy: not producing while at the same time placing more demands on the social systems.) Greece is an example of this having played out. This is also known as Socialism.

Given the human condition that greed, self-preservation, and laziness exist in almost all people, a democracy can only be sustained if there is protection from becoming a socialist society that collapses on itself because you run out of other people's money. (To quote Margaret Thatcher on the matter.)

Posted by: Charles Zimmerman | Feb 15, 2014 12:15

Sorry Jack, but no.

We the people have a long history of taking care of those less fortunate. Not only are their great merits of doing such a thing such as less crime, but it is the right thing to do. OUR Preamble to OUR Constitution makes it clear that one of the goals of OUR Government is to "provide for the general wellfare". To establish social programs that accomplish stated goal and administer them in due regard to equal protection is not "socialism".

Individual rights do not negate individual responsabilities. "All persons" should willingly pay support for the cause of Liberty in direct proportion to what they gain from its application. Those that do not cannot call themselves Patriots, but are instead theives.

It must be remembered that most government funded social programs are limited in scope and duration thus preventing gaming of the system. But of course the theives among US would disagree.

Nor is it patriotic to buy a company, sell its assets, including pension funds, move the buisness overseas. But yet OUR tax laws not only permit such treachery, they encourage it.

The bush babie's $1,600,000,000,000,00. tax refund had no strings attached. Much of OUR money, as it came out of OUR coffers, was wasted by the alreddy well-off and much to the detriment of US, was invested overseas.

Yes there are trillions of dollars being horded by corporations and the well-off. Instead of being used in OUR economy whereby each dollar is turned over at least 9 times, this money is doing nothing for US. This is what happens when taxes are not paid in proper proportion to profit gained.

Most certainly there are "takers" among US. Those large coporations that don't pay a living wage whereby their employees must rely on OUR Social Programs as a safety net. The number one culpret is Walmart. While ammassing billions in profits for the walton family, Walmart employees are the largest taker of safety net funds, as corpoations go. But yet it is the individual employee that gets the blame.

We the people has never been a "democracy". It was created as a representaive republic administered in a democratic fashion whereby the will of the majority holds sway, but, by the means of the Social Contract, "All persons" retain their individual right to remonstrate against any law that they believe hurts them directly. Having either lost in the courts, or worse just too lazy to put forth the effort to challenge a law, many are resorting to propaganda in order to sway public opinion. This sometimes has an immediate effect, people by and large symathetic to those being oppressed, but when the truth comes out, the impotence of the attempt will collapse on itself and wither away.

Mountaineer readers are encouraged to share their views on topics of concern in the community. Letters printed in the paper must not exceed 350 words, should not attack another individual or a business and should be about a timely topic of local interest.